This invention relates to colored flaky pigments wherein the surface of a flaky substrate is covered with a finely divided color pigment.
It is known that color pigments during the course of their production consist of extremely fine particles which are called primary particles. These particles posses a very high surface energy, and therefore are present in an unstable state and tend to cohere to coarser pigment particles. When a pigment of this nature is used, therefore, the cohering coarse pigment particles are mechanically crushed into primary particles for the purpose of enhancing the color-generating property. The surfaces of the crushed pigment particles also are chemically treated to enable the individual particles of the pigment to be kept in a stably dispersed state. The resultant pigment is easily wetted and dispersed in use. When the pigment treated as described above is left standing for a long time in a vehicle, however, the pigment particles in the vehicle cohere again, possibly to the extent of adversely affecting the color generating property of the pigment.